Enron and other scandals from the dot-com era prompted legislators to boost maximum terms for crimes like embezzlement and shareholder fraud. That set the stage for the long, hard-time sentences recently handed down, not just to Bernard Madoff (150 years), but in other recent cases involving investment fraud on a less-massive scale, such as those of Richard Harkless in California and Edward Okun in Virginia (100 years each).

Though judges have discretion in sentencing white-collar criminals, few want to stray from guidelines and risk having their sentences overturned on appeal, Barry Pollack of the law firm Miller & Chevalier tells Barlyn.

Pollack is mounting an appeal of Okun’s sentence, and notes that murderers rarely get sentences of more than 25 years from New York state courts. He furthers wonders whether a future with “entire nursing homes of white-collar offenders behind bars” won’t make us “look back and wonder if the present hysteria produced good public policy.”

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The Wealth Manager blog looks at issues that matter to wealth managers, financial planners and other investment professionals. It offers a sampling of the insights, advice and other coverage available at Wealth Management, a new specialized section of wsj.com that is led by editors Kevin Noblet and Patrick Graham. Visit the section here. Wealth Management publishes a newsletter, Morning Call, that provides a daily summary of items of interest to financial advisers. Sign up for Wealth Management’s Morning Call here. Write to us at wealthmanagerinquiries@dowjones.com.